Abstract

Titanus is the longest-living production company in the Italian cinematic panorama. Its more
interesting phase dates back to the early 1950s, when Goffredo Lombardo replaced his father
Gustavo at the helm of the company. Then Titanus, which was the biggest Italian studio both in
terms of industrial facilities and in regard to the width of its film distribution circuit, managed to
construct a solid company identity especially through genre films such as melodramas and film
comedies, until in 1964 a financial crisis forced it to shut down its productive branch. The aim of my thesis is to outline the company’s profile, by the means of the modes of production theories and
of the film genre theories which emerged in the United States in the late 1990s. This theoretical
framework was modeled after the Hollywood context, yet I maintain it is suitable also to describe a
great Italian company such as Titanus, which in turn was in many ways looking to emulate the
American studios model. Moreover, in order to perform my research, I examined the Fondo Titanus
preserved in the film archive Cineteca del Comune di Bologna, and also the original production
plans of some of the Titanus movies, which are preserved in the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in
Rome. After having examined the company profile and its means of production in the first part of
the thesis, in the second and in the third one – devoted respectively to the Titanus melodrama and
film comedy – I closely analyzed about thirty out of the 120 films produced by Titanus, focusing
mostly on the use of what Tom Gunning calls the “cinematic attractions” and the movies pathemic
devices, which I examined referring to the greimasian semiotics of passions. I was therefore able to
outline the Titanus productive strategies, and also to study how it modeled its company identity
through its staple genres.